ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the history of a short-lived British neo-Nazi groupuscule – the National Socialist Group. It draws on new archival sources, now available at the University of Northampton’s Searchlight Archive, to generate analysis of the National Socialist Group’s formation in 1968; its attempts to develop into a substantial organisation promoting a National Socialist lifestyle and culture; its limited successes in joining with international activists, such as the World Union of National Socialists; and its eventual demise by the end of 1969. Letters, membership data, internal briefings, publications and other material produced by the group during its lifetime are used to develop a picture of the clandestine organisation’s inner dynamics, and ultimate failings. The chapter also explores how the National Socialist Group’s leading activists sought to carve out a unique position for the organisation in the changing arena of extreme-right political groups in late 1960s Britain. The chapter concludes that, although in itself a tiny and largely inconsequential organisation, the National Socialist Group needs to be placed in a much longer history of such neo-Nazi groups promoting revolution and violence in Britain.
